STAR WARS Has a Long, Long Arm of Influence

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The final installment of the original trilogy of Star Wars films was released May 25th, 1983. I was ten days away from turning six months old, and if you had told me then how influential George Lucas‘s films would be on my life…well I wouldn’t have understood you because I was a baby. That said, Return of the Jedi was still the first movie I remember seeing in theaters that wasn’t animated in a Disney studio in Burbank, thanks to the 1989 theatrical re-release, and I still remember hiding behind my teddy bear when Jabba the Hutt came on the screen.

Of course, I’m not the only youngling or adult who can track her life by Star Wars moments. Thanks to a partnership between Shutterstock and Pop Chart Lab, you can now see the incredible web of influence that George Lucas, Industrial Light and Magic, and the entire franchise they birthed have had on the movie industry. You can check out all the connections in our feature picture above, but I also recommend that you click through here and go over to Fast Company’s fully enlargeable and zoomable version of it so you can get close and read all the details.

From character tropes like the space cowboy and the badass heroine, to technologies like OpenEXR File Image Format and Go Motion Animation, you can see the Force of influence that Star Wars has had, not just on storytelling, but on an entire industry and generation of filmmakers. Without Han Solo, would we have seen Nathan Fillion in tight pants? Without C-3PO, would we know and love Data? Maybe, but probably not.

It’s hard to imagine a world without our beloved Star Wars franchise, but when you rope in the fact that Star Wars and Lucas influenced so very many other films, it’s not even a world I want to think about. Looking at this chart, tell us your favorite moment of influence in the galaxy!